Foot Dragging On Darfur Genocide
Dean
Don Cheadle and John Prendergast have a rather stirring editorial in today's Wall Street Journal entitled The Darfur Genocide: Enough excuses. The time to act is now. In it they strongly take the U.S. government, particularly the Bush administration, to task for dragging its feet and making many weak, lame excuses for not acting more vigorously against the horrific crimes against humanity being committed in Darfur.
(If you aren't sure you know enough about Darfur, just click here and you'll know all you need to know.)
While I understand the argument that we cannot be all things to all people and fix every situation in the world--I entirely agree that we cannot--I also agree that the situation in Darfur simply cannot be ignored and that we really could be doing more.
On the other hand, Cheadle and Prendergast's editorial misses one key ingredient: who the hell to write to to turn up the temperature on our governmenet officials.
Well I can tell you who I wrote to:
First I wrote to president@whitehouse.gov just for starters.
Then I went to this page to contact the Secretary of State.
Then I went to www.senate.gov and www.house.gov, looked up my Senator and Congressman's email contact pages, and wrote them too.
It took me all of ten minutes to send the same basic message to all five people.
........so, uh, how long did it take you, anyway?
Related Posts (on one page):
- More ways to stop the Genocide in the Sudan
- Foot Dragging On Darfur Genocide
The U.S. and U.K. should press for a vote on a strong U.N. Resolution with real consequences and dare anyone to support crimes against humanity by vetoing it.
We already did that. Unfortunately, the US and the UK are the only nations that have been pushing the UN to take action in Darfur.
The Arab League, China, Pakistan, Russia and China blocked it. Here is a site where you can send them a petition:
The UN avoided taking action in Rwanda by refusing to admit that it was genocide. Kofi Annan is doing the doing the same thing in the Sudan. If you want to send him a letter about it, here’s the link:
Don't Hide from Genocide
Cheadle and Predergast say:
So what is the real reason why the U.S. has not responded as it should have? The truth is that combating crimes against humanity is simply not considered a national security issue. We don't want to burn our leverage on Sudan in the face of issues such as Iraq, Iran and Syria.
The government of the Sudan is an Islamic state that even Osama bin Laden can admire, with Shariah laws that encourage both slavery and genocide. It’s also the Islamic state that’s hiding a large part of Osama’s money. If we were fighting Islamist terrorism, we probably would have invaded the Sudan before we invaded Iraq, because in a war against Islamist terrorism, Sudan is extremely important.
If we were fighting a realpolitik war for the stability of oil-producing nations, we would have invaded Iraq first, which we did.
The Arab League will never approve of any action against the Sudan, because they do know how important the country is them. It provides funds for terrorism, wealth from slavery and, of course, oil. So they’ll continue to oppose any action in the Sudan.
When the US and the UK try to force the issue, the Sudanese government claims that Washington is using the Darfur crisis as a pretext to invade.
As we saw in Iraq, the US doesn’t control the actions of the UN. If we send letters directly to the source of the problem, the UN, it may prompt them to action. Again, here’s the link:
http://ga0.org/campaign/un_hide
It just takes a second. And it’s very encouraging to read that Abdulkarim Al-Khaiwani has been ordered freed. Congrats all!
If we were fighting a realpolitik war for the stability of oil-producing nations, we would have invaded Iraq first, which we did.
Becaue, y'know, Sudan is strategically located next to major terrorist-supporting/WMD-seeking nations like Syria and Iran. Not to mention the 9/11 commision report that concluded Saddam's regime had ties to Al Qaeda. Saddam also had expressed support for and interest in the methodology of the 9/11 attacks, and was considered to have one of the most powerful militaries in the region coupled with one of the most violent regimes.
And, y'know, if the war was for ooiiilll, where the fark is it?
On the other hand, if you want to look for a government with interests in keeping regimes like Saddam's in power, allowing and encouraging genocide in Sudan, and the UN veto clout to pull it off without ANY risk of UN intervention, look to our long-time "ally" France.
The war in Iraq was based on the Carter doctrine:
An attempt by an outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.
Saddam was a supporter of terrorism and he was a totalitarian, but his offenses weren't as grave as the government of the Sudan, which has killed more than three million people as part of their efforts to create an Islamist regime. The worst terror supporting states are Saudi Arabia, Iran and the Sudan.
I'm not completely opposed to the war in Iraq and it seems to have been successful in many ways, but the decision to invade was based on realpolitik, not a direct effort to fight the worst terror supporting states.
As for the terrorists in Iraq, they were anticipated, they're being fought, and they're losing.
Also, since when did proper military strategy dictate going after the "worst" or even "most dangerous" target first? Heck, in WWII when Japan bombed Hawaii, we responded by attacking North Africa. I somehow doubt the North Africans were the worst combatant of that war.
BK
We anticipated an insurgency. Did we anticipating it to be the size it is and to last this long, maybe, maybe not. But show me one war in the history of mankind that anticipated everything correctly. Even stuff that seemed obvious afterward.
Hindsight is always 20/20. Foresight, however...
BK
According to this, published in the Energy Bulletin:
As Vice-President, Cheney was put in charge of the National Energy Policy Development Group, which, in its May, 2001, report, pointed out that the Persian Gulf region would “remain vital to U.S. interests.” The Bush Administration hadn’t publicly raised the possibility of invading Iraq, but in August, 2002, seven months before the war started, Cheney warned that Saddam would be able to seize control of the world’s economic lifeline if he acquired weapons of mass destruction: “Armed with an arsenal of these weapons of terror, and seated atop ten per cent of the world’s oil reserves, Saddam Hussein could then be expected to seek domination of the entire Middle East, take control of a great portion of the world’s energy supplies, directly threaten America’s friends throughout the region, and subject the United States or any other nation to nuclear blackmail.”
American foreign policy has always been based on two things – fear of a loss of our oil supply and fear of nukes. That, not terrorism, is why we attacked Iraq.
Not that that’s a bad thing. What’s happened in Syria and Lebanon have shown us that the Islamists and their state supporters (Hizbollah/Iran/al Qaeda/Saudi Arabia) have been allied with Saddam &Syria’s Ba’thists for a long time.
Hindsightwise, I’ve thought that we should attack Saudi Arabia since October 2001. I thought that would be our next step after our very successful war in Afghanistan. After all, Saudis are mostly responsible for 9/11. Still, I’m surprised and glad that our actions in Iraq have been so successful, mostly due to the efforts of our troops.
I wish we were going to help the people in Darfur, but we would never do it unilaterally because the situation doesn’t threaten our oil supply and it’s not going nuclear. Those are still our main priorities, as far as I can tell. The only way we’ll help is if the UN creates a multinational force.
Yes, invading Iraq was an act of Realpolitick: there were states we could say were "worse" but for any number of reasons (military, logistical, diplomatic), it was harder to invade them, and furthermore, it's not clear that strategically they were the best choice.
My view is that Iraq was strategically the best choice for a large host of reasons. Mind you, I understand that this can be debated. For example, in World War II, the U.S. was attacked by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor in the South Pacific--and its first major military response was to engage German and Italian troops in Northern Africa. Some severely criticized this choice, and in retrospect a few holdouts still say it was not the best choice. Whatever: hindsight is 20/20. Roosevelt &his war cabinet decided that Northern Africa was the place to start, and that's where we started.
With Iraq the choice was similar. I don't happen to agree that oil was more than a tertiary interest there: the fact that Saddam had oil made him wealthy and made funding weapons development and terrorism easy for him. We also knew that the entire Middle East was the ultimate source of the virulent islamic radicalism and that we no longer had any interest in the "stability" of a region that murdered 3,000 American citizens on our own home soil. It was time to alter the map and alter the rules.
If we'd gone after Sudan first, it would have been over quickly, but the Middle East would still be a seething cesspool. Now instead, because of our (entirely justifiable) actions, we're seeing reforms all over the place.